Tempera
Description
A water thinned paint that dries to a water resistant film. Egg tempera is an aqueous emulsion paint with an egg yolk or whole egg binder that originated in medieval Europe. These paints dry to a semi-matte appearance by the evaporation of water and the coagulation of the egg protein. After about 1400 CE, variations of tempera were made with egg/oil, gum/oil, glue/oil and other emulsions as artists began to experiment with drying oils. As linseed oil paints became popular at the end of the 16th century, tempera died out. It enjoyed a revival near the end of the 19th century when Cennino's treatise was published.
Some other water thinned paints that dry to form a water soluble film are sometimes incorrectly called tempera paints (e.g., Distemper, Gouache, Poster paint and watercolors).
Synonyms and Related Terms
egg tempera; gum tempera; glue tempera; oil tempera; tempera paint; Pittura a tempera (It.); tempera (Fr., Deut., Ned.); témpera (Esp.); Malarstwo temperowe (Pol.); têmpera (Port.)
Resources and Citations
- R. J. Gettens, G.L. Stout, Painting Materials, A Short Encyclopaedia, Dover Publications, New York, 1966
- Reed Kay, The Painter's Guide To Studio Methods and Materials, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1983
- Ralph Mayer, A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques, Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1969 (also 1945 printing)
- Hermann Kuhn, Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art and Antiquities, Butterworths, London, 1986
- Dictionary of Building Preservation, Ward Bucher, ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York City, 1996
- Paint in America, Robert Moss (ed.), John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1994 Comment: M.Phillips, "A Victorian Trompe l'Oeil"
- Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempera (Accessed Sept. 28, 2005)
- D. van der Reyden "Identifying the Real Thing" ww.scmre.org/analysis.htm
- The Dictionary of Art, Grove's Dictionaries Inc., New York, 1996
- Art and Architecture Thesaurus Online, https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat/, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, 2000